So this was the mask that we hung above the "stage" at the Daggers show on Halloween. My camera ran out of batteries, so I just now was able to take the first picture of it. So there.
So I used to be a jock in high school. I played football. Big whoop. Every year when I go home for Turkey Day, I play in an alumni touch football game with a bunch of old doods who take it way too seriously. This year I hurt my hand. The knuckles are kinda turning purple. I'd be lying if I said this didn't make me feel manly.
I'm back in Philly now. I should be busy the next few weeks, which I'm excited about because the worst part of this semester has definitely been the boredom. I need to make more friends. If only I weren't so much better than everyone I meet...
(
Drew's gonna love that comment. Come on, Drew! Comment! Do it!!!)
Coming home never ceases to weird me
out. It's just very strange to see that things keep happening and lives are still lived and people still...do people things. The inexorable march of
time and all that tripe. Of course, it doesn't help that my mom totally changed my
room and continually mixes things up between my sporadic visits. Even though this is my fourth Turkey Day back home, it still blows me away. Driving around these streets that I knew so well only a few years ago, seeing people whose parents I know, small-talking with friends who tell me to say "Hi" to my Dad for them. This town is an entirely different
animal, friends. Not quite sure if I'll ever get used to it. But I do know that as much as I swore I'd never want to see these people again, it was kinda nice to walk into a bar where people knew me and I knew them. However, I
am glad that I only stayed at that bar for 40 minutes.
When I am the head of a major motion picture studio, and I decide to undertake the most ambitious and expensive trilogy of all time, I want to make sure to hire the best director there is. Specifically, he has to have lots of experience doing similar kinds of movies. Like
this. And
this. And especially
this.
I worked on a debate for my Comm Ethics class today for about six hours. I've also been working on composing this piece for my music class for about an hour now. I'm writing a melody and rhythm part to "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (the last six lines, anyways), and it's hard. Very hard. I'm about half done. It's in E Natural Minor, which, for those of you scoring at home, is the same as G Major.
Schoolwork pisses me off to no end. And I ran out of gum! Motherfuckers....
So I went out to the bar (hurray for free Cokes!) with two of my roommates and some other peeps tonight, and my roomie Taylor was in rough shape because he's going through some ish with his novia. So, naturally, he got really crunk and then proceeded, as is his wont, to make a big ass of himself by singing and talking....a lot. I mean, a lot. Like, seriously? A lot.
So we get into the house and come into our room, and he's still singing the song "All Over You" by Live, which we had heard on the radio for the first time since '96. He then climbs into bed, mumbling about whether or not to call his girl up and have at her, but decided against it. He then let out a nugget of wisdom that I really liked. He said that he didn't want to deal with reality tonight, because it was 3:30 in the morning. Instead, he said he would "deal with reality tomorrow, on Sunday, because that's what Sundays are for."
Then he made fun of me for typing loudly, peed with the bathroom door open, and passed the fuck out. Pretty surreal.
So I noticed today, in my early-afternoon
haze which I wander through on a daily basis, what a beacon of light and hope coffee is for me and so many others. If you ever want to be amazed, just find out where college students congregate to put fixins in their coffee. It's like watching robots perform surgery.
And one may wonder, since I don't do any other drugs, if I consider myself addicted to coffee and therefore not as "pure" as more stringent straight-edgers might. The answer is, without question, "42." Also, leave me alone to wallow in my hypocrisy.
So I've been hearing a lot about
Koy Detmer recently. Okay, not really, because Eagles' backup quarterbacks don't get too much press, but I had to find a way to start this and reference him. Anywho, my roommate
Drew was telling me that, when the Eagles go on roadtrips, all Koy brings with him is a toothbrush. And as you can tell from the picture, he's definitely one of
beard season's official sponsors. Here's to you, Koy. We're not assuming you don't shower, but here's to hoping.
Some nuggets of wisdom from my latest reads.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in
A Man Without A Country"Okay, now let's have some fun. Let's talk about sex. Let's talk about women. Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn't get so mad at them.
Why are so many people getting divorced today? It's because most of is don't have extended families anymore. It used ot be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.
But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it's a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it's a man.
When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it's about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they're really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: 'You are not enough people!' "
"How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, 'If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?'
But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being.
I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake."
And Rick Bass, in
Winter
"This froth-without-vent will kill me someday if I ever slow down, if I ever stop exercising. Such anger is not a good habit, but I can do nothing about it except fight, or run.
So I run. Thinking about the expatriate writers of the twenties and thirties, and the most famous one - was it Ezra Pound? - who said he had abandoned his country because he could not bear to see what it had become.
How would he like it fifty years later?
I'm hiding up here - no question about it.
The decay in our nation is frustrating. We truly are becoming senile. I feel as if we are very near the end; each time I go to a city I feel it more and more. All I want to do is get back to Yaak, back to the snow, back up into the mountains.
I'm wondering if I've already fizzled out, died, and up here, in the snow and the mountains, I have already begun an afterlife. I think that is what it may be. I have never seen any of these things before."
"There are two worlds for me - and for anybody, I think - and I do better in one than in the other. I used to be able to exist in both, but as I pay more and more attention to the one world, the world of the woods and of this valley, I find myself, each day, less and less able to operate in the other world."
So I got turned onto this site called
Last.fm, which is basically a tracker for all the music you listen to on your computer. It's pretty cool, and I'm still pretty new at it, but here's my
page. Check out my selections and be floored by my superior musical sensibilities! The Radiohead is mostly my roommate (and secret lover...shh!) Taylor, who likes to use my computer to listen to Radiohead for a long time while he goes to sleep.
I just want to say for the record:
The Man In Black has coached me through many a night stuck alone with my thoughts. Few things are finer in life than a good batch of Cash very, very late at night.
So a few days ago I posted a couple of lists of very good things.
B asked whether or not I had recently been talked down off the edge. I did no respond because I knew the only way
to respond was with this quote from Kurt Vonnegut's novel
Timequake, a piece of wisdom that I have been frantically searching for, off and on, since I read the novel three years ago. Who knew that a simple google search would have come up with it?
One thing which Uncle Alex found objectionable about human beings was that they seldom took time out to notice when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and he would interrupt the conversation to say, "If this isn't nice, what is?"
Ok ok ok, so I know that that post was serious. Kinda. So here to balance it out, I present this dream that I had last night. I never remember dreams, but yesterday was a weird day full of naps and
After Hours, so I remembered this one for some reason.
So I had to move to Berlin for some reason, for a job or something. I flew into Paris, though, and it only took ten minutes to go from Paris to Berlin, which was cool. While in Berlin, I met an older woman and we started hanging out, and stuff was cool. Then I had to go to Munich for some reason, but it was cool because the subway only took thirty seconds to get there. So while we were in Munich there was a large gathering for some reason and this woman and I were responsible, in some way, for this rich guy's death - he got trampled by the crowd and we couldn't save him or something. He was all mangled and lost his arms. Pretty gross. So we were kinda sad about that, but then we realized that he was totally rich, so we found out where he lived and went over to his house. As we were trying to hotwire his Range Rover, he came back to life and kicked me (he had no arms, after all) once to stop me from stealing his Range Rover. But then he backed up a couple of steps, slammed his already-pummeled face on the ground, did a back flip, landed on his stomach, and died again.
That's all I remember. Anyone care to interpret?
I'm a pretty political guy, but I try to do my best to keep it out of this here blog - I learned long ago that talking about politics doesn't win you any friends, even if they agree with you. I leave all the stuff to
Lou, even though that asshole never updates.
That said, I love our President. During a recent
speech where he railed on those who have dissented against the war in Iraq, he brought up some excellent points. He said that winning in Iraq (whatever that means) is "central" to the war on terror and in stopping "extremists [who] are trying to establish a radical Muslim empire extending from Spain to Indonesia." He also talked about Syria, which many people claim is going to be the next American war abroad. He called those bitches out, too, saying that they "must stop exporting violence and start importing democracy."
America! Fuck yeah!
Ok, so I took a nap today. I take naps like once every never or so. I'm feeling kinda weird. I sweat a lot while I was sleeping. I also have been playing with
this a lot. I mean a lot. Here are some fun examples.
Me as a woman:
Me as East-Asian:
It takes a little practice, and the only way to save the photos is to do a screen capture (shift+print screen) and then crop it in a photo program. Boy howdy I'm a dork!
Additional items for list of things that are very good right now:
The Cure "Close To Me"
Cheese Fries
Impending beard
My Blue Album-era Rivers Cuomo hair
Rick Bass books
Cast Iron Hike
Watch It BurnThe Fiery Furnaces
Rehearsing My Choir (though I couldn't tell you why)
Soulseek
Gum
Junior Mints
New picture of aforementioned female human being on my desk
Peeling dead skin
Lists
IRON MAIDEN
Newly-purchased larger ear plugs
Very good things right now, in no specific order:
-A female human being in New York City
-Fiona Apple
Extraordinary Machine
-At The Drive-In
This Station is Non-Operational
-Lightning Bolt
Hypermagic Mountain
-Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
-Shorts/flannel/PGA Tour jacket combo
-Coffee
-Lunch meats
-Seeing fiction/non-fiction teacher at grocery
-Fun blog comment banter
-Cats (der)
-Guitar
-Bloody hockey masks
-Hummus
-Daria-Merrimack College oversize mug (gift from sister)
-Foliage
-The idea that
Lou is riding a bike somewhere on or around campus right now
I love it when I rediscover shows from my distant or not-so-distant youth and realize what truly great shows they are. One of the Nickelodeon affiliates on digital cable shows reruns of
Daria very late, and I have learned to watch for these relgiously. It's like they were looking five years into the future at my cheery outlook on the world that I have today. Or maybe I just assimilated to her life subconsciously...
There have been two references to "Dada" in my life today. Weird.
I am still looking for my opportunity to inject the word "pejorative" into conversation. I've been waiting three days now. This is getting frustrating, like vocab blue balls. Although I did get to use "indolence" today, which was pretty rad. No matter that Liz totally called me on it; it still fucking ruled.
A passage from the Sedaris book I've been reading, eerily appropriate seeing as I just returned from the city:
"Patrick would get involved, saying that violent crime was a natural consequence of the capitalist system, and then, eventually, the New York skyline would appear on the horizon and we'd all stop talking. If you happen to live there, it's always refreshing to view Manhattan from afar. Up close the city constitutes an oppressive city of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound that even our communists are temporarily rendered speechless."
That's a weird fucking city, man. I still don't know what to make of it. I could wax philosophical on it, I suppose, but I don't think I will. It's getting rather late...
I get a lot of emails from Amazon.com and Ebay. I'm beginning to suspect that they're stalking me because I'm the weakest of all their customers.
The best foods for procrastination are:
1) sunflower seeds
2) hummus
3) salsa con queso
4) gravy
5) pizza
Ok, pizza isn't really great for procrastinating, but I feel that any list that has "best" and "food" in the title needs to have pizza on it.
I have a film treatment and a creative nonfiction essay due tomorrow (today). I still don't have an idea for my movie and the essay is maybe half done. Yet I'm drawn to the gamecube with an animal magnetism since I only have one more game left in my season...
The library is a fantastic place and it makes me very angry that I haven't really utilized until this, my last, year at this shithole. Today I took out a bunch of books.
The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Speaking with the Angel, a collection edited by Nick Hornby
The O. Henry Award Stories of 1997
The Hermit's Story and
The Book of Yaak by Rick Bass
Hurray for me! Three cheers for not doing schoolwork ever again!
At the request of
b, here's a short passage from the essay that I'm writing about nature, modernity, and a Japanese Tea Ceremony house, oh my! It isn't edited much at all and some (a lot) of this will most likely end up on the cutting room floor. But I like how it reads right now. Plus I'm really self-indulgent.
It looks like the other farmhouses left over from the Peale family, but there is an intangible quality that makes the house seem like it exists in a wholly different world from the one around it. The two other houses nearby are a light yellow, inoffensive and close enough to an earth tone to remind passersby about the antiquity that the buildings represent. The teahouse is a darker hue with dark blue trim and the paint is just started to show signs of its age, of the winters and summers spent getting bigger and smaller. It has a small overhang in the front and a stone patio in the back that abuts a small stand of trees. There is a tiny creek that runs in front of the house and is usually empty, but there is a surprisingly sturdy bridge over it. It is not an overbearing structure, but standing next to it, underneath the trees that muffle the sounds, the majesty and serenity of the house envelope me. I could sit here for hours.
I suppose I have always had a deep connection to the natural world. I was born and raised in a fairly rural area, my family built a house on a large plot of land that used to be an apple orchard (the present property lines still run along the stone walls constructed all those years ago), our backyard was an enormous forest that stretched for nearly a mile behind the house, and hardly a week went by during my childhood where my friends and I didn’t undertake some kind of expedition in the vast marshes and woods that encompassed our neighborhood.
Living in a city now is weird and unnatural. How is it that we have developed into creatures that can live in such stifling conditions? Our apartment buildings are filing cabinets, our parks are merely strange facsimiles of what the natural world might have looked like, our lifestyles include habits and machines and tendencies that automatically and willfully disconnect our species from the millions of others on the planet.
Ok, that's all I've got for now. I was gonna post a pic or two from the Daggers show, but I'll do that later. This post is already too long.
